Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Immanuel Kant

  • Clausewitz’s death: Cholera and melancholy

    Nicolas Roberto Robles Badajoz, Spain   Carl von Clausewitz. Via Wikimedia. “Sollte mich ein früher Tod in dieser Arbeit unterbrechen” (“If an early death should terminate my work”) — Carl von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege   Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz (1780–1831) was a Prussian general and military theorist who stressed the psychological and political aspects…

  • Francis Bacon’s natural philosophy and medicine

    JMS Pearce Hull, England   Fig 1. Novum Organum Scientiarum, 2nd edition, 1645. EC.B1328.620ib, Houghton Library, Harvard University. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. Lord Bacon was the greatest genius that England, or perhaps any country, ever produced. – Alexander Pope, 1741   The early seventeenth century was a time when natural philosophy, the precursor of modern…

  • Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau and aeration of the White Plague

    Philip R. Liebson Chicago, Illinois, United States   Photo from the Adirondack Experience Museum. Circa 1895. Edward Livingston Trudeau was born in 1848, one year before Frédéric Chopin died of tuberculosis. Trudeau’s extended family eventually included Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada, and Garry Trudeau of Doonesbury fame. In his time tuberculosis was killing…

  • Novalis: The white plague and the blue flower

    Nicolas Roberto Robles  Badajoz, Spain   Figure 1. Bust of Novalis at Nikolaifriedhof (Weiβenfels). Photo by Doris Antony on Wikimedia. CC-BY-SA-2.5. Novalis was the pseudonym and pen name of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr1 von Hardenberg, a poet, author, mystic, and philosopher of early German Romanticism. Young Hardenberg adopted the pen name “Novalis” from his twelfth-century…

  • Swaddling: Forever bound in controversy?

    Jennifer Borst Hammonds Plains, Nova Scotia   The Virgin with the Swaddled Child. Albrecht Dürer, German. 1520. As a bleary-eyed new parent, I found myself embracing the quiescence and prolonged slumber swaddling offered my restless and sleepless first-born. Strategic bundling subsequently proved disappointingly ineffective with my second colicky child and unnecessary with my jovial, naturally…

  • The philosopher’s dementia: Immanuel Kant

    To be the world’s greatest philosopher in the prime of life is no guarantee against developing the ravages of dementia in old age. This is what happened to Immanuel Kant, a little man scarcely five feet tall followed by a devoted servant with an umbrella, who would take his daily walk at so regular an…

  • Medical Autonomy and Vaccines: A Kantian Imperative

    Justin M Le Blanc Philadelphia, United States   Image courtesy of Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images [email protected] http://wellcomeimages.org In The Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, Kant seeks to establish a concept of duty based solely on reason. He believed that one must not just act in “accordance with duty . . .” but…

  • How to acquire something external – Immanuel Kant on kidney-paired donation

    Hansjörg Rothe Würzburg, Germany   Immanuel Kant Literature in its finest examples stands above time. When Shakespeare wrote Hamlet he could not foresee what our daily life would be like at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Neither could he have dreamt of all those technical innovations mankind would achieve in the 400 years to…